For decades, this remote Soviet science town was a thriving hub of invention, attracting many of the country’s finest minds, who could work undisturbed by Moscow. At its peak it boasted 65,000 scientists and more than 25 miles of underground rooms. This picture is of an organic chemistry lab

Ortíz Monasterio spent several days photographing the bright, bold interiors. When he asked who was responsible for the colour scheme, he was told that they only had one colour at a time, so if something needed painting it would be done with whatever that colour was

The gas dynamic trap machine. Scientists at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk (30km away) use it to heat plasma in a magnetic field. In 2013, they heated plasma to 4.5m degrees. They hope this will be a step towards producing clean and safe fusion energy

Akademgorodok began to stagnate in the 1970s during the Brezhnev era, and faced a brain drain after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But now it is starting to flourish again after President Vladimir Putin declared his wish to make it a
centre of innovation once more